Global vision of heliconias research as cut flower: a review

Abstract

It is relevant to systematize the global knowledge generated about heliconia due to its economic importance in tropical floriculture and the cut flower market. The objective was to explore the results generated in scientific research related to the cultivation of heli-conias as cut flower in terms of its methodological approach, research axes, and spatial distribution in terms of the contributions by country. A bibliographic search was conducted in Scopus, Web of science and SciELO based on the keywords “heliconia” and “tropical flowers”. Thereafter, a content analysis of the documents was conducted with the Nvivo software using a priori categories in terms of methodological approach, research axes, year, countries, and cultivars or varieties. The results indicate that the scientific contributions are mostly under a quantitative approach (98.1%). The investigations mainly address productive aspects (74.5%), post-harvest aspects (16.1%), market (6.7%) while industry-used products (2.5%) are scarcely addressed. The countries that make the most contributions are: Brazil (54.5%), Colombia (15.4%) and Mexico (10.9%). The most important species are: H. psittaco-rum, H. bihai, H. spathocircinata, H. rostrata and H. wagneriana. These results suggest conducting research to identify problems from the physiological, environmental, productive, and economic processes, as well as considering the strategies of farmers as a priority. This must be approached from paradigms where social actors (farmers), their development and the impacts of their social tasks on the cultivation of heliconias are considered the main axis.